On Authenticity

By studying ethnographic intersections of racialized and classed subjectivity informing diverse activist practices of “consensus process” in Mexico and Quebec, I illustrate how it is important for scholars and militants concerned with “intersectionality” to avoid collapsing analyses of race and class, including in relation to studies of “authenticity” and its longing. The anti-capitalist bourgeois subject’s practice is not what it preaches in unique ways, which lead to unique neuroses around authenticity. This multi-sited study is organized to intervene constructively in social movement debates regarding “consensus process,” as well as develop methodological reflections relevant to the theorization of intersectionality and epistemology.

— E. Lagalisse